Will the Nexus Prime Still Use a Dual Core 1.5 Ghz OMAP 4460?

A few days ago, Archos announced that their upcoming tablets that were supposed to have a dual core 1.5 Ghz OMAP 4460 processor in them, won’t have that chip anymore, because it was delayed by TI until early 2012. Archos will now settle for an overclocked OMAP 4430 with 1.2 Ghz per core.

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So the question is, does this affect only Archos, or does it affect everyone who was planning on using the OMAP 4460 this year? Because that would mean the Nexus Prime won’t have it, either, and it was originally rumored it will, because people found code that seemed to suggest Ice-Cream Sandwich will be optimized for it.

Here’s what I think. If Google was in fact planning on using the OMAP 4460 for Nexus Prime, then unless there was a sudden disaster with the OMAP 4460, I doubt this will affect the Nexus Prime launch in any way. In this case, the most likely issue would be that TI is saving up the chip for Google, and limiting the supply for everyone else, because they think Nexus Prime will be a big success, and they won’t be able to make that many of them in time (especially with the holidays coming).

So either it’s this, or Google wasn’t planning on using the OMAP 4460 anyway. Why would they waste so much time making ICS optimized for it, only to find out later that it won’t be ready in time?

So what other chip could it be? It’s certainly (and unfortunately) not Kal-El. The phone version was supposed to come out just in time for winter holidays, and that was with the planned August launch for the tablet version. Now that the tablet version was pushed to October, we’re not going to see Kal-El in phones this year anymore.

That leaves Exynos and Snapdragon. The reason why it’s more likely to be Exynos is that the Nexus Prime is supposed to be made by Samsung, and lest we forget, Nexus S also comes with Samsung’s previous chip – Hummingbird. But some rumors say Exynos is not very compatible with LTE, although they could’ve made it compatible by now.

Another reason why it’s not Exynos, might be because Nexus Prime was rumored to have a dual core 1.5 Ghz chip, and so far I’ve only heard about a dual core 1.2 Ghz and a dual core 1.4 Ghz Exynos chips.

That would only leave Qualcomm, which besides TI, would be the only one with a dual core 1.5 Ghz chip right now, and it was also one of the chips that was in the very early Nexus Prime rumors.

Worst case scenario, Google would use an overclocked OMAP 4430 1.2 Ghz dual core chip, just like Archos. I’m sure Ice-Cream Sandwich will bring a lot of software optimizations, like better multi-core processing and GPU acceleration, but it still sounds like the new Nexus phone would have end-of-gen hardware, just like Nexus S did, instead of having hardware that will set the standard for at least the next 6 months. Hopefully, it would still have an HD display, if that processor can still handle it.

Which processor would you prefer the Nexus Prime to have? And is any of this a deal breaker for you?

i’d like 2 see the nexus prime coming with the omap 4470 instead of the not-so-well-working 4460 ;)

https://plus.google.com/117702410245683101961/posts Lucian Armasu

OMAP 4470 might come even later than Kal-el for phones, so very little chance of that happening now.

Anonymous

I wouldn’t consider it a deal breaker because no matter what it will have ICS lol but I really would like to see the TI OMAP in there, but even if its the exynos processor ill still buy it. I just really want the next nexus. Looking forward to what Google has to offer

Bryson

It won’t matter what processor it comes with if ICS is buggy and not polished. Let’s hope that Google learned from their lesson from pushing out HC too fast.